Circle Pharma Appoints Evelyn Wang, PhD as its Vice President, Translational Medicine

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Evelyn Wang, PhD has joined Circle Pharma as its Vice President of Translational Medicine and will lead Circle’s translational team in its development of macrocycle therapeutics against intractable cancer targets.

Dr. Wang has over 20 years of experience developing and applying advanced techniques in translational biology. She most recently served as the Executive Director of Translational Medicine at Exelixis, where she was responsible for leading all translational medicine from pre-IND through development across multiple programs and was a member of the clinical development team. Earlier in her career, Dr. Wang was the Director of Translational Research at BioMarin Pharmaceutical, Inc., where she was the translational research lead for the Poly ADP-ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitor Talazoparib, which is now marketed by Pfizer for BRCA-mutated HER2-negative breast cancer. Prior to her role at BioMarin, she held leadership positions in Translation Medicine for several pipeline candidate programs in an earlier engagement at Exelixis and was the Founding Director of the Stanford Proteomics and Integrative Research Facility. Dr. Wang was awarded a doctorate in biochemistry and pathology from New York University Medical Center and was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT / Harvard Medical School where she conducted research in the laboratory of Dr. Hidde Ploegh.

“We are delighted to have Evelyn join the Circle team,” said Raj Singh, PhD, Circle’s Chief Scientific Officer. “Evelyn brings a wealth of translational medicine experience to Circle having successfully led teams advancing multiple oncology programs into the clinic in her prior roles. She is joining us as our work against the cyclin targets is generating exciting data and we are excited to have Evelyn to help us drive these and other programs to the clinic.”

About Circle Pharma, Inc.

Circle is developing a new paradigm for macrocycle drug discovery deploying structure-based rational design and synthetic chemistry. Circle’s technology facilitates the design and synthesis of intrinsically cell-permeable macrocycles that can address both intra- and extra-cellular therapeutic targets, and can be delivered by multiple routes, including oral administration. Circle’s macrocycle drug discovery & development platform is applicable across a wide range of serious diseases; the company is initially focusing its development efforts on intracellular protein-protein interactions that are key drivers in cancer. Its lead programs target cyclin proteins, which are part of the regulatory machinery that controls progression of cells through the growth and division cycle. Inhibition of cyclin A is synthetically lethal to cancer cells that carry mutations causing dysregulation of the Rb pathway – such mutations are frequently found in small cell lung cancer. Cyclin E upregulation is found in many tumor types including uterine and ovarian cancer and is often associated with resistance to widely used cancer therapies, including trastuzumab and cdk4/6 inhibitors.